USAID Pulls Funding from ICDDR, B

The UK's Department for International Development (DfID) recently stated the following in a press release on their increased donation to the Center for Health and Population Research (perhaps better known as the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh or ICDDR, B):

“Based in Bangladesh, the centre is in a unique position to promote solutions to the health, population and nutrition problems of the poor in Bangladesh and around the world. By training Bangladeshi scientists and researchers from developing countries, the centre also contributes to strengthening the institutional capacity and scientific knowledge of local experts.”

The centre also researches issues related to child and reproductive health, and family planning. This recently led USAID, the centre’s second largest donor after DFID, to withdraw its funding on the grounds that the centre violated USAID’s policy which opposes certain family planning methods and abortion. (Italics added.)

The U.S. withdrawing funds from the ICDDR, B is a really, really bad decision! This Center became famous for its important research on Cholera. Its development of oral rehydration therapy resulted in saving the lives of countless children. Indeed, it demonstrated that research could generate simple, affordable techniques that would have profound, life-saving impacts in developing nations; that understanding triggered important increases in the funding for such research worldwide. The Center has over the decades of its existence built a solid reputation, and is the best known internationally supported center for health research focusing on the needs of developing nations. It is supported by some 55 donors, and has a distinguished international Board of Trustees.

Of course, the Center is much more. Since 1978, it has trained more than 20,000 health professionals from over 78 countries of the world. Its Dhaka Hospital provides treatment to around 110,000 patients each year (about 60% of them are under five children) with uncomplicated-and complicated diarrheal diseases, and associated health problems including malnutrition and pneumonia. Matlab, the Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS), has been running for 35 years covering a population of over 200,000 and not only serves as an important element of the global infectious disease surveillance system, but has developed and demonstrated the techniques for disease surveillance in poor nations and poor populations. Its Laboratory Services Division has taken up activities on HIV surveillance, voluntary counseling and testing and other research projects for investigating the dynamics of a possible HIV epidemic. The list goes on and on.

The ICDDR, B merits U.S. support. I hope that people will communicate with their Senators and Congressmen and call for a reversal of the government's decision. I also hope that U.S. non-governmental organizations will fill the gap left by the government's withdrawl.